


Five Things Walrus Fetched That Weren't Charles (And One that Was)

by DreamingPagan, Sirenswhisper



Series: Graced [5]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Admiral Hennessey and Gates adopt half the island, Complete with serious discussions and utter silliness, F/M, Families of Choice, Fluff, M/M, Semi-Crack, The adventures of Walrus the Dog, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Walrus exists for treats and praise, and Charles exists to have his trouser leg chewed, post Full of Grace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 15:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13743858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingPagan/pseuds/DreamingPagan, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sirenswhisper/pseuds/Sirenswhisper
Summary: “Get Charles!”“I’m fairly certain he doesn’t know what a Charles is,” James points out dryly, and Thomas turns.“He’s intelligent,” he insists, “he’ll learn.”In which Walrus learns the difference between Charles, his friends and family, and various inanimate objects.





	Five Things Walrus Fetched That Weren't Charles (And One that Was)

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Penny, who requested fluff and has been promoted to Assistant Fluff Writer

“Get Charles!”

“I’m fairly certain he doesn’t know what a Charles is,” James points out dryly, and Thomas turns. 

“He’s intelligent,” he insists, “he’ll learn.” 

“He’s standing too far away,” James says, and Thomas looks up. Charles is, in fact, on the beach, at least. He’s made certain of that before sending the dog off to fetch - the object of Thomas’ command is within eyesight, and he’s pointed clearly to him. Still - 

“Walrus - Walrus! Here boy - shit -”

“Hey - hey!” 

The shouts sound over the beach, and then there are men running - and then a crowd forms, and laughter sounds instead of shouts.

“Look at him - look at him go!”

“Hey Logan - think we can get  _ him  _ to luff the sails next time?” 

“Five shillings on the dog to make it as far as that clamshell there.”

“You’re on.”

“If he manages to tear my sheets, I’m taking it out of your business funds,” James murmurs to Thomas, who gives him a rueful look. 

“Alright,” he admits. “Perhaps he doesn’t know who Charles is. Yet. Walrus! Walrus, that is not a Charles - drop it!” 

The dog looks up, the edge of James’ sail still in his mouth, and Thomas makes a sharp motion. The pup drops the sail, looking confused, and comes bounding back to his master, barking as if to ask what he’s done wrong. Charles - the actual, real Charles - stands, looking mystified.

“Did I hear my name?” he asks, and Thomas sighs.

“You did,” he says. “Next time, Walrus. Come on - let’s go and say hello and you can sniff him again.” 

*******************************************************

“Get Charles!” 

“Thomas - Charles is currently sitting in the tavern, no doubt with his boots up on one of the tables and a mug of grog in hand. Do you really think Walrus will -”

“Let go! Fucking mutt - fucking street full of mud and horse shit -”

“That,” Thomas says with disappointment in his voice, “is not Charles.” 

“Logan,” James says, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Walrus - sit!” 

The pup sits with a thud, and releases the leg of Logan’s trousers. The pirate sits up, glowering at his captain, and James stares down at him.

“Mr. Logan,” he says, eyes squeezed shut against his impending headache. “Either you smell enough like Vane that the dog can’t tell the difference, or you smell worse, and Walrus couldn’t resist. Tell me - which do you find more disturbing, because I can’t be bothered to do the requisite calculations.” 

“Your bloody dog,” Logan says, “is a menace. He dragged me here, from the taproom. I’m covered in whatever the fuck was in that street, and you want to talk about what I smelled like  _ before?” _

James continues to stare, and Logan’s face begins to redden.

“It was one night,” he says. “We had shore leave and the both of us was bored and -”

James’ eye is twitching, and Thomas looks from him to Logan, comprehension suddenly dawning on him.

“You have an agreement,” James grinds out, “with one of Mrs. Mapleton’s girls.”

Logan flushes deeper red.

“We’re on the outs,” he confesses. “She thinks since we’re together I shouldn’t be paying her for the privilege and I wanted to keep on ‘cause she can’t afford it, and -”

James doesn’t answer - he merely turns, and strides toward the well. Logan starts to scramble to his feet, a protest on his lips, but he does not quite manage to utter it. In a moment, water cascades over his head, and Walrus, standing nearby, yelps in surprise as one of his humans sluices the refuse off of his catch.

Thomas shakes his head.

“A bath, I think, Mr. Logan,” he says, and points toward the well. “And in the meantime, I’ll have to see if Walrus can’t be taught to at least listen to voices ahead of sniffing trousers.”

****************************************************************

“Get Charles!”

There is a girl striding down the street toward him, and Thomas is not certain whether he should run or stand his ground. If he were a lesser man, he thinks, he might well consider legging it, but in this case - 

Well. One does not run from a tiger, does one? He has never been in any jungle of any kind, but that is what he has heard, and at the moment, he is beginning to see the wisdom in the advice, because the girl approaching him resembles nothing quite so much as an angry, snarling, highly dangerous predatory feline. 

“My hat,” she all but growls. “Your fucking dog has it. Want it back.  _ Now.” _

“I’m afraid -” Thomas starts, half wondering if this is how he dies, for he does not have the girl’s hat, and there is no sign of Walrus to be had. He starts to look around - and hears something come running toward him. The dog stops just short, hat in his mouth, and Thomas sighs.

“Walrus,” he orders. “Drop it.” The dog obediently does so, and Thomas is not given the chance to lift the hat up off the sand or brush it off - the girl does it herself, snatching it away and jamming it unceremoniously back over her fire-red hair, and suddenly Thomas recognizes her.

“My apologies, Miss Bonny,” he offers. “You were not the intended target. Charles -”

“Charles is a shit,” she growls, then softens a bit. “Grabbed my fucking hat and threw it then ran like a fucking coward. Weren’t the pup’s fault.” She crouches down, and, with a challenging look upward at Thomas, she reaches out to Walrus. “C’mere,” she offers, and Walrus hesitates another moment, but, at a gesture from Thomas, he inches forward, and then begins to wag his tail as Anne starts to scratch behind his ears. She stands, and he whines.

“I think you’ve made a friend,” Thomas observes, and Anne snorts. 

“He wants to be friends, he can get it right next time,” she says. “Think if I line Vane’s pockets with something smells good he’d grab the right fucking person?”

“It may work, and if it doesn’t, I can think of several other dogs in Nassau who will thank you,” Thomas answers, and gets what might - just might - be a grin in response, although it is difficult to tell under the hat. 

“Gotta go,” Anne says. “Need to have a word with the butcher.”

**********************************************************************

“Get Charles!”

“Captain Teach. I would appreciate it if you would put the dog down. Gently, if you please.”

Hennessey does not look up from the bill of sale he is staring down at, and so he senses rather than truly sees Teach fuming at the edge of his vision. He endeavors not to crack a smile - the man is rather volatile, and Hennessey would prefer not to have a brawl here in his office.

“The dog needs to learn manners,” Teach growls, but does as Hennessey bids. Walrus shakes himself off upon being released, and, at Hennessey’s gesture, trots over and lies down behind his desk.

“He may lack for attention span, but not manners,” he says, scratching behind Walrus’ ears almost absently. “I distinctly recall requesting that you avoid becoming covered in mud,” he scolds, looking down, and receives what might be a contrite expression in return.

“Charles is otherwise occupied,” Teach says gruffly. “Teach your mutt to avoid my trouser legs.” He turns, and Hennessey raises his head.

“I am perfectly aware,” he says, “that Charles is occupied. If you look, I believe you will find him halfway up the rigging of the Ranger, ensuring that all is well before castoff. I am also perfectly aware that in the absence of Captain Vane, Walrus considers his friends and associates to be fair game for fetching, and as I had meant to have a word with you anyway, I am willing to consider his choice of victim very fortuitous.”

Teach turns back slowly.

“A word?” he asks, and Hennessey motions to the chair sitting across from him. Teach eyes it, and then slowly, almost reluctantly, he sits. “You realize that I could hold you to that,” he says. “A word, and no more.”

“I should like to see you try,” Hennessey answers, and for the first time, he looks Teach in the eye. “It is about Charles,” he says, and sees Teach bristle.

“What of him?” he asks. 

Hennessey waits a moment. This is a subject to be approached carefully, after all - and, too, he must consider if James will forgive him the telling of the tale that best illustrates his point. 

In the end, he sighs, and sits forward, gaze still firmly on Teach.

“When I first took James under my wing,” he says carefully, “he was not as he is today. No - hear me out. My first sight of him was as a scrawny lad, rudderless and grieving his family, and while he may have sassed me enough to make me wonder at times whether he wanted saving, I can well remember the look in his eyes on his first night with his own bed, curled up with a cup of hot milk. He has grown, since, but I often fear that I have, in taking him from a life of poverty, taken him from the very roots that allowed him to become who he is.” 

Teach raises an eyebrow. 

“If you think I have done Charles a disservice by taking him from some imagined life of comfort -” he begins, and Hennessey raises a hand. 

“Pray listen rather than interrupting,” he snaps. “I have raised James as best I was able, with the knowledge that whatever harm I have done him has been offset at least in part by the good turn I was able to do him in the process. You, on the other hand, have taken Charles from a life of hardship, and I fear that you are doing him little good by way of return, based on the simple fact that the lad would not know comfort if it were to rear up and bite him. He knows still less, I suspect, of what it is to receive a friendly suggestion rather than take an order from a superior. He does not know -”

“Comfort is for those who desire complacency,” Teach growls. “This little island experiment of yours can’t last. You’re deluding the lot of them into thinking you can make of this a second England, and when the Empire tires of war and turns its sights to this place -”

“Then we will negotiate as necessary or, if push comes to shove, we will make them pay dearly for this place, but we can do nothing if I am left with two competent commanders and a much greater number of men who can do nothing without being ordered to do it! Christ, man - can you not see that much, at least?”

“By the time England returns to these shores, Charles and I will be long gone.” Teach starts to stand.

“I think not.” 

He sits back down, and leans forward.

“That sounded,” he says quietly, “like a threat.” 

“Call it a warning,” Hennessey answers. “Garnered from experience.” He looks at Teach, and sighs. “You are losing him,” he says at last, quietly. “Charles is not a stupid boy - in fact, he is on the verge of becoming a  _ man,  _ and I have formed the impression that he is to you what James is to me. He is your son. Find a way, Captain Teach, to prove that to him, or I fear that you will have not a son but a subordinate - one who may in time find that he no longer values the role you have assigned to him.” 

Hennessey looks back down at his paperwork, no longer looking at Teach. He hears the other man heave himself to his feet - hears him retrieve his hat, and, with quieter steps than Hennessey might have credited for such a large person, Teach walks away. The door closes behind him, and Hennessey looks down again.

“Good boy,” he tells Walrus, and pets the dog’s head, then slips him a treat.

**************************************************************************

“Get Charles!”

Half an hour later, James finds himself massaging the bridge of his nose.

“I’m not putting that back,” he says. The chair sitting in front of him is battered - one rung on the bottom, as a matter of fact, seems to have come loose, and he can see tooth marks in one of the legs. The chair, in fact, bears every evidence of having been pushed to the top of a set of stairs and then, somehow, pushed once more, toppling over and over itself to the bottom, whereupon Walrus the dog seems to have grabbed hold of it and dragged with all his might. Chair - Charles. They are, he supposes, not entirely unrelated.

Either that, he thinks, or Charles Vane had simply found it expedient to kick the chair down the stairs in the pursuit of one of his more ambitious pranks, and Walrus has elected to chew on it now that it’s here. He will never know which and does not wish to. 

“What the hell are we going to do with it?” Thomas asks, and Gates snorts. 

“We’re not doing anything with it,” he says. “By now, Hornigold will have strung Vane up by his heels to find this thing. Vane will have sung like a sparrow, because there’s no good in pulling off a prank if the victim has no idea  _ you’ve _ done it. And Hornigold -”

Gates plops himself down in the chair, backwards, legs spread to either side, arms resting against the back -

“...will take back his chair now, if you please!”

Benjamin Hornigold stands on the beach, hands on his hips, one of them clutching a hat, looking down at Gates with an expectant stare. Gates grins up at him.

“How much is it worth, Ben?” he asks. 

“It is worth the price of my not setting fire to what little hair you’ve got left,” Hornigold answers. “Oh, get up off it, will you? The poor thing’s seen enough trouble without enduring the horrors of being sat upon by you!” 

Gates looks affronted.

“Horrors?” he asks. “Just for that, I might keep it. It’s got a nice groove to the seat - your bony arse’d never last an hour in this chair, you might just -” 

Hornigold reaches out and begins to beat him about the head and shoulders with the hat, and Gates, laughing, gets up.

“She’s all yours,” he says, still chuckling. “Many happy hours may you have sitting like an old broody hen in that fort of yours - hey!”

He turns, and Hornigold rolls his eyes skyward at the sight of Hennessey sitting in the chair, backwards, just as Gates had done.

“Oh Christ,” Hornigold mutters. “Not you as well!”

“I’m sure James could fix this,” Hennessey says, gesturing toward the loose rung with an innocent expression, “if he were so minded. In exchange for, say -”

The rest of what he is about to say gets lost - Gates leans over and distracts him with a kiss, then catches his weight as Hornigold darts forward and removes the chair from under him.

“That,” Hennessey says, straightening and getting his own feet under him again, “was an exceptionally dirty tactic. With the right incentive, I might be persuaded to be impressed.”

“We can discuss it later,” Gates says, “inside.”

Hornigold rolls his eyes.

“I will leave you to it,” he says. “Hal - Eirnin.” He nods to both, and then, toting his chair, he starts to walk back up the beach, and Gates grins.

“You’re bloody determined to get him to use your shipyard, aren’t you?” he asks, and Hennessey rolls his eyes.

“The Lion has been sitting there in the harbor for saints alone know how long,” he says. “The spars are an affront to God and the wretched Pretender he’s so fond of,” he answers, and Gates chuckles.

“Come on,” he says. “You can rant about politics if you like while we teach his muddiness here the difference between the word chair and Charles.”

************************************************************

“James, get your sticky paws out of that dish - Thomas, thank god. I regret to inform you that the man you’ve married is a unrepentant thief, and a good one at that.” 

Hennessey turns, and James takes the opportunity to snaffle another bit of dinner, only just pulling his fingers back in time to avoid a smack with a spoon and grinning at Gates.

“Guilty as charged,” he says. “That’s delicious.”

“It’d bloody well better be for what I had to do to get the spices,” Gates says. “Alright, all three of you, out. This lot’ll be ready in five minutes - Eirnin, here, take these plates, you can set the table.” Hennessey takes the proferred dishes, and James attempts not to groan as Gates gives Hennessey a light pat on the arse. 

“Has anyone seen Charles?” James asks, and Thomas pipes up.

“I’ve sent Walrus to fetch him.”

Miranda looks up as Hennessey emerges from the kitchen and wrinkles her nose.

“These accounts are not going to balance themselves,” she says, gesturing to the books spread across the table. She moves one book half an inch and hunches forward, quill scratching as she makes another note, and Hennessey chuckles fondly.

“They will wait,” he says, placing plates between the sheaves of paper, “until we have all gotten something in our stomachs. If Hal won’t let me work through the night then you may be certain I do not intend to let you have all the fun.” 

James takes the opportunity to dart in, bookmarking the tome that Miranda is working in and closing it firmly. She turns back, finds it in his hands, and then gives a huffed laugh of defeat. She rises, and kisses James firmly before beginning to rescue her accounts from beneath the table settings. Together they make short work of it, ducking and weaving as Thomas joins Hennessey in setting down steaming dishes. Not for the first time, James notes that Miranda’s movements are absurdly graceful - quite unlike his own half-aborted steps and frequent stops, and James cannot help but watch, wondering at the precise balance required for each movement. He wonders, for a moment, how she might fare on deck, and furrows his brows.

“Darling,” he starts. “How would you feel about coming along, the next time Hal and I -”

He is interrupted by shouting - a great deal of shouting.

“Let go - for fuck’s sake, mutt, I know! Get off my fucking trouser leg -”

James attempts not to snicker but eventually cannot hold in his mirth - he begins laughing, and does not stop when Charles arrives at their doorstep, dragged on his back, apparently, from wherever he had been when Walrus had finally located him.

“Yeah, yeah, keep laughing,” Charles grumbles, sitting up. James tosses a treat to Walrus, who wags his tail, and then reaches downward, assisting Charles in standing up and helping to brush him off.

“Ah. Charles - just in time.” 

Hennessey’s voice sounds from behind James. He comes forward, looks him up and down, and then looks down at Walrus. 

“I will take it,” he says, “that the mud is your doing.” 

Walrus barks, and Hennessey rolls his eyes.

“Charles, you had best go in and get clean - I’ll make certain there’s a plate with your name, and speaking of - would you be so kind tomorrow as to invite Miss Bonny to join us?”

“Tell me - are you planning to adopt half the pirates on this island, or just me and my crew in addition to this lot?” Charles grumbles, and Hennessey raises an eyebrow.

“I would not need to if I imagined she were being adequately fed. The girl looks half starved,” Hennessey answers. “Go on. Inside, and then we can discuss your accounts and whether or not your quartermaster needs to be run up the mainmast like a flag for underfeeding the crew.”

The bickering fades into the distance, and James finds himself standing on the doorstep, looking out into the fading light. It is evening in Nassau, his family is here -

“James, dinner is going to get cold. Are you standing out here brooding?” Thomas’ voice sounds like he’s caught between concern and amusement, and James turns, a smile on his lips.

“Just enjoying the sunset,” he answers, and turns back, into the house, and his large, noisy family, who are now sitting down to dinner.


End file.
